George

George, HENRY, was born in Philadelphia, September 2, 1839, went to sea at an early age, and in 1858 arrived in California, where he became a journeyman printer and married. After a number of years spent at the case, he rose to the editorial desk, conducted several papers, and took an active part in the discussion of public questions. In 1870 he published Our Land and Land Policy, a pamphlet outlining the views which have since made him widely known, but which had only a local circulation. In October 1879 appeared Progress and Poverty in California. In January 1880 it was published in New York, and in 1881 in London and Berlin. It has since gone through many editions, been translated into the principal languages, and had a circulation without precedent in economic literature. Progress and Poverty is an inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions, and of the increase of want with increase of wealth, in the course of which some of the most important of the hitherto accepted doctrines of political economy are recast. Denying the dictum that wages are limited by capital, he argues that wages are produced by the labour for which they are paid; and, denying the Malthusian theory, he contends that increase of population instead of causing want should tend to greater plenty. Then, by an examination of the laws of distribution, in which the laws of wages and interest are shown to correlate with the hitherto accepted law of rent, he comes to the conclusion that, as produce equals rent plus wages plus interest, therefore produce, minus rent, equals wages plus interest. The increase of economic rent or land values explains why the increase of productive power so marked in modern civilisation does not commensurately increase wages and interest. To the tendency of the steady increase in land values to beget speculation in land, which prevents the application of labour and capital, he traces the recurring seasons of industrial depression. The remedy he proposes is the appropriation of economic rent to public uses by a tax levied on the value of land exclusive of improvements, and the abolition of all taxes which fall upon industry and thrift. Meeting objections which may be urged against this proposition on the ground of justice and public policy, he finally brings it to a larger test in an examination of the law of human progress, which he defines to be that of association in equality. Other works are The Irish Land Question (1881), Social Problems (1882), Protection and Free Trade (1886), A Perplexed Philosopher (against Herbert Spencer's views on land, 1893). He visited Great Britain and Ireland in 1881, 1883, 1884, 1888, and 1889, and Australia in 1890. In 1886 he ran for the post of mayor of New York as an independent candidate nominated by the working-men. In 1887 he established the Standard, a weekly paper in New York. He died suddenly on the 29th October 1897, in the midst of a second candidature for the mayoralty of New York. His Principles of Political Economy was posthumously published. Though sometimes styled socialistic, George's views were for the most part diametrically opposed to state socialism. His aim was to sweep away all interferences with the production and distribution of wealth, and only to resort to state control where competition is impossible—to leave to individuals all that individual energy or thrift accumulates, and to take for the use of the community all that is due to the general growth and improvement.